Please Don't Print That
by SnowWhiteQuill
Summary: Involving Hermione Granger being Draco Malfoy's "mistress," the many blunders of the Wizarding press and media, and general wit and hilarity. Loose response to CHALLENGE. DM/HG, HP/GW, BZ/PP.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I own the wit, not the characters.**

_**A/N: **__After re-reading one of my favorite stories- "Secrets" by Campy Capybara, I decided to respond to the challenge within her story. The challenge was posted by Scarlet. Now I don't know who Scarlet is, but I really do love the challenge. However, I am only going to loosely respond- meaning that the challenge will not be in my story- only the idea. If you want to know what the challenge is, I will post it at the end of this chapter. _

_So here's my newest story everyone! I have already written half the story, and this is the first quarter or so of it. I just decided to split things up, because it would be WAY to long as a one-shot._

The name Hermione Granger incited many ranges of emotions in witches and wizards across the globe; happiness, admiration, sympathy, respect, and even fear.

People knew a lot about Hermione Granger. She was a savior of the Wizarding World, the youngest woman to appear on a chocolate frog card, and the girl every little girl looked up to. However, those were not the things on most people's minds when they first thought of her.

The first thing most people thought, but rarely spoke out loud, was that they were sure that Hermione Granger was Draco Malfoy's mistress. It's what the gossip mill and the press shoved down their throats anyway.

Details of the Malfoy/Granger relationship had never been publicly stated by a fellow War Hero, so few were lucky enough to know its origins.

But everyone knew what Draco Malfoy's father felt about it.

News of Britain's most talked-about couple had first spread from the moors of the Malfoy Mansion to the smallest cobblestoned street of London. It was shortly after the war had ended, and people were ready to believe anything.

They needn't have to be so open-minded.

What else was one suppose to assume after Lucius Malfoy ran out of the burning Malfoy Mansion just long enough to scream "Curse you, Hermione Granger! You can rot in hell with my bastard son if you love him so much!" before returning to his successful suicide attempt?

No one stopped to note the irony in the blonde Death Eater's staunch religious beliefs.

Friends of Hermione Granger were too busy searching for Draco Malfoy, who had mysteriously disappeared a week prior to his father's fortunate death.

Friends of Draco Malfoy either heard no news of the event from their miserable Azkaban cells, or were too busy searching for Pansy Parkinson, who had also mysteriously disappeared.

Friends of the late Lucius Malfoy were too busy sharing the Azkaban cells of some of Draco Malfoy's old friends. However, most of them did go without a fight; they had surrendered their wands once they saw that the Dark Lord had fallen to the boy-who-lived-and-triumphed. Only some of them insisted on waiting the perfunctory decade and a half to make sure Voldemort _wouldn't_ rise out of his grave like last time.

Ironically, it took the press a few weeks to latch its over-eager hands onto the Malfoy/Granger relationship. Journalists were the only ones who could legitimize such a scandalous piece of gossip, but they were unsure of what to do at first.

Immediately after Harry Potter's victory, the press had begun to work overtime. All the time. They had churned out thousands of celebratory articles for Voldemort's demise, hundreds of wedding announcements for couples basking in the new victory, and dozens of "Imprisoned Death Eaters!" lists all in one week.

The next week, they had published interviews on Dumbledore's Army members, thousands of Ministry warnings against drinking and Apparating (those rates had just about skyrocked), and "Have you seen this person?" ads for Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson (hundreds of these were printed, because they were the only members of Dumbledore's Army who _hadn't_ been interviewed).

Offices within the Daily Prophet, the Wizarding Times, the Quibbler, the Monthly Magick, the Witch Weekly, and the Goblin's Gossip were all being bombarded with owls.

People wanted to share their war stories. People had spotted Harry Potter snogging Ginny Weasley in Hogsmeade the other day. People wanted the new Minister to supply Diagon Alley shops with more Firewhiskey. People had reason to believe that their annoying co-workers were somehow involved with the Dark Arts and should therefore be locked up.

_Everyone_ wanted to say _something_, and the caffeine-addicted, underpaid journalists knew for fact that it was hard to know who to trust and who to print.

So when the newspaper and magazine offices were being bombarded with yet another mob of owls claiming that the Heroine of the War was indeed carrying on a sordid relationship with the son-of-a-Death-Eater-turned-a-Hero-of-the-War, the press just dismissed they story as a side effect of the new shipments of Firewhiskey and an aftereffect of the euphoric aftereffects of the Light's victory.

Yet after another month of hero-worship, raging parties, and various expansion to the Azkaban prison cells (turns out, Voldemort had _quite_ a bunch of followers), rumors of the Malfoy/Granger relationship steadily became fact. After one more month, the public acknowledged that Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger were not just having a relationship; they were having an affair. A very immoral and illegal affair.

And how exactly did the public find out about all of this?

Through a series of journalism blunders that could only be described as phenomenal.

_**A/N: **__dun dun dunn! __Mini-cliffie! I hate them too, but there was no better place to cut off. I will have a very, very interesting chapter next week to top this one. Promise =)_

_READ AND REVIEW! Tell me if you guys like it! And don't worry, I will continue updating my other stories!_

Here is the original challenge by Scarlet:

_A murmur spread amongst the guests as she entered the room. _

_She owned respect born of fear as the most powerful witch alive. If not in her own right, then certainly by association. _

_The best friend of Harry Potter. _

_The foremost protégé of Severus Snape. _

_But the ultimate scandal attached to the name of Hermione Granger brought with it, also, her greatest power. _

_She was Draco Malfoy's mistress. _


	2. A Whiff of Fishy Business

**Disclaimer:** I own...nada.

* * *

The first sign appeared when a well-publicized interview with Blaise Zabini took a turn. It was not a very surprising turn since Rita Skeeter was the one conducting the interview. After a few questions about Blaise's spy work for the Order during the war, Rita moved on to his fellow spies; Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy.

She asked Blaise how long Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger had been seeing each other. In response, Blaise's beautiful Mediterranean skintone (voted #2 in the Witch Weekly poll- after Ginny Weasley's cream n' roses) turned a whole shade paler. He inquired how Rita Skeeter could even prove that the relationship was real. Rita replied that she couldn't.

But the famous gossip columnist did not hesitate to serve up her trademark question: "Are you denying the existence of the relationship, then?" As Rita looked up from her Dicto-quill, she observed that Blaise's Italian nostrils looked even more prominent when they were flared. A moment later, the ex-Order spy abruptly walked out the door. A footnote in the article summarized the rest of the interview; Blaise Zabini vowed never to return to Rita Skeeter's office. He followed his promise with several choice insults, one of which was that he wished he had listened to Harry Potter's advice about beetle-eyed, duck-mouthed journalists.

Readers of the Daily Prophet, Witch Weekly, and Wizarding Times were perplexed. Blaise Zabini, (along with his two Slytherin comrades) was never known to lose their cool. Why was he so upset?

The readers who had years of experience deciphering interviews and worshipping gossip columns were more than happy to enlighten their ignorant peers. When a former Dumbledore's Army member didn't jump at a chance to deny something, it was because they _couldn't_.

That morning across the Wizarding community, many cups of tea were spilled, many mouthfuls of pumpkin juice were hastily spit out, and many eyebrows (narrow, bushy, trimmed, and inexistent) were raised to their maximum capacities.

Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy _were_ going out.

It was official and no one could quiet down the high-pitched shrieks of joy heard around Britain for the rest of the day.

After all, who doesn't love a good war romance?

* * *

Blaise Zabini ran for his life. He Apparated immediately to his family home after leaving..._that woman._ Yes, Rita Skeeter would henceforth be known as _that woman_ in Blaise's vocabulary. _That woman_ was most likely going to be writing another article tomorrow about Blaise Zabini's brutal murder at the hands of one Draco Malfoy and his lovely accomplice, Hermione Granger. What was even worse was that no one would care that Blaise was murdered. The public (who loved to be fed good doses of celebrity romance every hour), would skim past the gory details and let their eyes focus on the fact that Draco valued Hermione's honor enough to kill his best friend for her. Fan girls would start worshiping that pale-assed bastard even more than before, never caring that the friendlier (and hotter) Order spy was rotting in his poorly dug grave.

No. Blaise could see the future, and he could not let all that happen. He needed to take action. If he still had any of those DA reconnaissance skills left in him, now would be the time to use them.

Now, where would Blaise start? He knew that Draco never read the tabloids so the cause of Blaise's likely death would probably be in the hands of one Hermione Granger. Hermione never admitted to reading gossip columns or war interviews, but Blaise had caught her hands on a Witch Weekly more than once. Her claims of "just giving fun reading material to Draco's poor elf Muffie" were perhaps the worst excuses he has ever heard in his life.

Blaise couldn't hide all of the gossip magazines in the world from Hermione...so he decided to make it so that she would never be able to _look _at the incriminating articles.

After all, Blaise Zabini has always been handy with a Visualization Charm.

* * *

Muffie the house elf was very confused. If she wasn't a young elf of only 99 years, she would have blamed her confusion on her diminishing eyesight. But Muffie was young (regardless of what Ms. Hermione thought), so Muffie knew that she could trust her protruding, orb-like eyes. She was sure that the frontcover of Ms. Hermione's new Witch Weekly did not show a picture of an French model dying on the runway. It was a picture of Ms. Hermione and Ms. Draco, captioned by the words "SECRET ROMANCE UNVEILED?" in pink cursive, followed by "THE UNTOLD STORY OF DRAMIONE- CONFIRMED!"

But then Ms. Hermione once again exclaimed to Muffie, "Merlin, will you believe what is happening these days? A witch will starve herself to death just to be the last one walking down Vunatella Dursace's catwalk show! Did these fashion industry airheads learn _nothing_ about managing their priorities after the war that just happened?"

Muffie shook her head and was about to correct her master's girlfriend when Hermione's eyes suddenly widened.

"Muffie! I forgot! You didn't eat your Magikal Vitamins yet! I am so sorry for not reminding you sooner! Come, let's go get them, shall we?" Hermione had recently taken up the valiant duty of preserving Muffie's "depleting health."

Hermione gave an encouraging smile as she mistook Muffie's frown as an expression of excitement and took the elf by the hand; forgetting all about dead French models.

* * *

Pansy Parkinson was strolling down Diagon Alley in her new green pumps. They were the first shoes she had picked up after becoming engaged and they complemented her ring extremely well. Not that her ring needed to be complemented to be seen. It was a huge, 7 carat first-class emerald ring, with a light sprinkling of diamonds on the band. Emerald had always been her favorite stone. She didn't care much for the color green (her Slytherin school spirit never extended to the house colors), but every single woman in the Parkinson family have preferred emeralds to set their engagement rings, and Pansy was no exception. Emeralds were the symbol of Venus and eternal faith, after all. And with a world of cheating bastards, who didn't want a bit of reassurance?

Even more than that, Pansy's own mother had designed the ring for her when she was a little girl. Back then, she was still engaged to Draco and as it was customary, the ring was sent to the Malfoys for safekeeping. After the war, Lucius Malfoy locked himself up in his family home and had the nerve to refuse to give the ring back to Pansy! Luckily, Pansy had been able to persuade Narcissa to let go of an engagement that was obviously broken, but it had taken a mighty long trip for Draco and Pansy to finally get a hold of the emerald.

Blaise was ecstatic as well. He knew how much the ring meant to Pansy and he had even agreed to propose again with the right ring. But for now, Pansy needed the Malfoy insignia removed from her beloved emerald.

On her way to Knockturn Alley, the bride-to-be was sadly too deep in thought about the advantages of a strapless wedding dress to notice the photographer that was busy snapping shots of her ring.

* * *

_An excerpt from page 6 of the Daily Prophet:_

A certain black haired vixen in Slytherin green pumps was seen strolling towards Knockturn Alley today and those pumps were not the only green she was wearing! The blue-eyed beauty was sporting a one-of-a kind emerald engagement ring...with an insignia. An insignia belonging to a family of platinum blondes, whose heir has reportedly been dating another beauty. One who is definitely NOT sporting a ring. Switching beaus so fast, Mr. Malfoy? This reporter smells something fishy and it's definitely not those Knockturn Alley beetle eyes. You can see the visual proof for yourself, right here...

* * *

**a/N: **Ok, you can pretend the picture's there. Just visualize...yep? You see it? great! Please R and R!


End file.
